Nottingham Forest star Ola Aina says Taiwo Awoniyi's serious injury would never have occured if the assistant referee had raised his flag earlier.
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Awoniyi suffers serious injuryAssistant referee raised flag lateAina says injury could have been avoidedFollow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱WHAT HAPPENED?
Awoniyi was awoken from an induced coma on Wednesday after undergoing surgery to repair a serious abdominal injury that stemmed from the 27-year-old colliding with a post in Forest's 2-2 draw with Leicester City on Sunday. Antony Elanga was offside in the build-up to the incident but the assistant referee did not raise their flag until the play was completed. But team-mate Aina suggested this protocol, which was introduced in 2020, should be binned as "the whole world could see" Elanga was offside.
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He told The Daily Mail: "Anthony was miles offside. The whole world could see and so could I from where I was. You think 'offside' straight away. Surely you could just lift the flag up? None of this would have happened to 'T' if the flag had just gone up, would it?"
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Injuries like this may lead to a rethink of this protocol but the way this incident was handled by Forest has also drawn scrutiny. Club owner Evangelos Marinakis came onto the pitch at City Ground after the game, allegedly to express his frustration to manager Nuno Espirito Santo – who had used all his blocks of substitutes and therefore could not replace Awoniyi – how this was handled. This has been a dark few days for Forest.
AFPWHAT NEXT?
While Awoniyi continues his recovery, Forest are set to open an internal review into the incident and establish just what went wrong.